beginning
by evandre
Summary: Raven's on a collision course towards the ground, but her thoughts keep straying to one person in particular. Abby/Raven romantic relationship.


_Part 1 of a Doctor Mechanic Writing Challenge. Word prompt: beginning_

There's only one option after the pressure regulator blows.

Raven rushes over to where the spacesuit hangs on the wall, snatching it off its hook. She's scrutinized every inch of the escape pod in the few days since Abby approached her with this plan, but the spacesuit's been resting inconspicuously in the shadows – it hadn't even occurred to her to include it in her pre-launch inspections. She casts a furtive glance over her shoulder towards the bay doors. There's no sign of Kane and his security force yet, but she only has minutes – seconds, maybe – to don the zero-g attire and launch the pod before he realizes he's being misled. She can't afford to perform a proper safety check on the suit.

She quickly skims her fingers over the patched, graying cloth, looking for any lacerations or ripped seams. The rubber seal around the neckline bounces back promisingly after she prods at it, and the air supply gauges indicate they are at 75%. A few shallow, rusty scratches mar the metallic surface of the helmet, and there's an ample layer of fine dust covering its visor, but there's nothing else wrong with it – at least nothing obvious. She's going to have to simply trust that this decades-old suit will protect her from the unforgiving vacuum of space and the brutal descent to the ground. Raven had promised Abby that she would get to those kids, and she's not someone who defaults on her promises.

 _Abby_.

Cruel, stinging tears well in Raven's eyes at the thought of the other woman. She angrily blinks them away, trying to keep her focus on properly donning the suit – its integrity is suspect enough without her overlooking a clasp or a seal because she was blinded by tears.

She slides her feet into the boots and starts to tug the fabric up her legs. "Dammit! Son of a…" she mutters, the flimsy material slipping through her fingers. Grappling with the baggy, unwieldy garment isn't enough to stop her mind from stumbling over the chain of events that have led to this absolute cluster-fuck of a situation.

If Raven hadn't gone on that unauthorized spacewalk, Finn wouldn't have taken the fall for her, he wouldn't have been jailed, and he wouldn't be on the ground right now. Finn made his own choices, and the Council made their own choices about how to rule and govern their people, but it feels like it's all Raven's fault anyway, and the guilt is still white-hot and heavy in her chest.

And if she hadn't been able to read Abby so easily, she wouldn't have become suspicious and dropped into conversations that weren't meant for her ears, and she wouldn't have ended up volunteering for what's looking more and more like a damned suicide mission. Abby's still practically a stranger, yet Raven has instinctively placed a deep and profound amount of trust, faith, and hope in her. Raven hasn't spent the past week sweaty and elbow-deep in the guts of a one hundred and thirty-year old escape pod just out of a desire to reach _Finn_.

And Nygel.

 _Fucking Nygel._

Raven clenches her fists at the thought of the black-market ringleader, and that piece-of-shit regulator she gave her. If Raven had finished her pod repairs ten minutes earlier, they wouldn't have needed Abby to create the diversion with Kane. But with the faulty replacement part from Nygel, Raven and Abby would have still been in this same conundrum – a busted pod and only one suit for two people. And knowing Abby's penchant for self-sacrifice, Raven would still be on her way to Earth by herself.

Raven makes a small choking sound as her throat closes up, and the tears start anew. It was supposed to be her and Abby – _together_ – and now? She's facing the scariest thing she's ever done – _alone_.

The horror of Abby not coming with her is made even worse because "not coming with her" is a pitiful euphemism for the truth. What it actually means is Abby is about to be killed in one of the worst fucking ways imaginable, and Raven cannot fathom that this compassionate, intelligent, resourceful woman is about to die at the hands of the very people she's trying to help. Abby's a fucking _hero_ , and the only comfort Raven takes in this situation is that if this plan actually succeeds, these people will have come to understand what an enormous mistake it was to execute Abby Griffin.

Raven finishes securing the suit's gloves around her wrists, and rotates the helmet into place. The helmet emits a clear, steady hiss as it seals and engages the air supply, and the sound shakes Raven out of her heavy thoughts. No matter how she got here, this is the cold, arbitrary reality she has to accept – Abby's sacrificing her life so Raven has a chance, so the one hundred on the ground have a chance, and so the scores of people they want to cull on the Ark have a chance.

Reality _sucks_.

She tosses her head from side to side, draws a deep lungful of stale air, and climbs into the pod. After strapping herself into the seat, she begins flicking switches and jabbing at buttons. Raven could start up one of these pods in her sleep, but the bulky gloves coupled with her rattled nerves cause her fingers to deflect off the controls more than once, forcing her to mentally double-check each step as she works.

Raven startles when the bay's pre-launch warning claxons come to life, the grating sound serving to drive home the sheer insanity of what she's about to do. Her pulse kicks up to a frenetic pace, echoing loudly in her ears within the confines of the stuffy helmet, as a sheen of moisture forms on her brow. The doors of the pod click shut, but without a working pressure regulator, the seal won't last two seconds after the ship exits the Ark – she'll be at the mercy of an antique spacesuit's durability, and she'll only have the oxygen left in the suit's supply. She rubs her gloved palms over her thighs and concentrates on the rise and fall of her chest, trying to steady her breathing and conserve the air already flowing through the suit.

Her breathing settles, and Raven raises her hand, one shaky finger hovering over the last button in the launch sequence. Once she pushes it, there will be no going back, but at this point none of her options seem particularly promising. Death likely awaits her no matter what she chooses, whether she stays on the Ark and is floated by the Council for blatant treason, or whether she hits that button and faces the numerous perils involved in a plummet towards Earth.

But only one of her options grants any glimmer of hope to both those on the ground, and those facing sacrifice on the Ark. And she hasn't come this far to let Abby down.

Raven's developed an immense amount of respect and care for Abby in the short time they've known each other. Daring escape plans and spaceship repairs have kept Raven too occupied to fully ponder why it feels like a meaningful, personal victory every time one of her stupid jokes causes Abby to crack a small smile, despite the gravity of their situation. Or why her heart thumps, lively and charged, when Abby rests a warm palm on her back and peers over her shoulder, face so close to hers, as she's working. And she hasn't yet determined exactly why she finds Abby's eyes so compelling, or why the bravery and conviction brightly shimmering in them stirs in Raven such a fierce desire to make Abby proud.

Raven glances out of the pod's windows towards the main bay doors, casting one last wish that Abby might come rushing back through those doors, back to her, at the last second. Her heart sinks when she detects no movement. She'd wait here all day for Abby if she could, but she needs to go. She squeezes her eyes shut and bows her head, offering up a silent prayer.

 _May we meet again, Abby._

The final launch button's amber light blinks at her in a slow, foreboding pattern. She leans forward and punches it.

The floor panels underneath the ship slide open with a jolt and a metallic clang, depositing the pod into the airlock below. The panels above her head slide shut once more, and she grimaces, clenching her teeth as she awaits the jarring drop about to come.

The outer airlock doors open and she's suddenly jerked forward against the harness she's strapped into, then slams backwards into the seat. The pod shoots towards the earth, tumbling end over end. Raven's breathing and pulse soar again as her equilibrium is thrown off and panic sets in. It only takes seconds before the pod reaches an upper orbit and stabilizes, but Raven's entire life flashes before her eyes in that short time all the same.

Raven tips her head back and calms her breath once more, having used up far more oxygen in those few seconds than she should have. Far above her, the hulking mass of the only home she's ever known now appears miniscule, framed by an endless background of glittering stars and sweeping darkness. Below, a gauzy blanket of clouds swirls over azure seas, emerald forests, and across auburn deserts and mountains. An ethereal absence of sound surrounds her as she floats in orbit – from this perspective, the setting is almost serene.

Her lungs start to ache as the air circulating throughout the suit gets thinner, and the view screen flashes an alert that she's approaching her coordinates. That peaceful-looking wilderness below her is about to become either her salvation or her ruin. She makes a few more adjustments to the pod's controls, then directs her attention to the lever for the pod's thruster rockets, and the irreverent label she had placed on it.

 _KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE_

She'd thought it was funny when she applied it, imagining that she and Abby might share a tense but companionable chuckle over it as they faced possible doom together. But now – alone, terrified, and knowing that Abby's on her way to a horrifying execution – she's not laughing.

"Don't let me blow up," Raven pleads, to the archaic pod and to whatever deities might be listening. She swallows hard and reaches forward, gripping the lever, and yanks it towards her.

The rockets blast to life and the ship immediately plunges, the sudden movement making Raven's stomach lurch and bile rise in her throat. The aged wiring inside the cockpit sparks and pops, numerous warning alarms ring out, and the illusion of serenity is gone.

The pod shakes violently as it nose-dives, the seat's harness biting into Raven's body as she thrashes against it. Heat permeates the cockpit and an ominous orange glow fills Raven's limited vision through the visor, the metal hull of the pod blazing with the inferno of re-entry. The clamor of warning signals gets louder, more detectable through the helmet as she nears the atmosphere.

She's pretty sure she's about to die a fiery, messy death, but instead of looking towards the ground, instead of thinking _please let Finn be okay without me_ , she tries to catch a glimpse of the Ark through her chaotic, quaking view. One thought comes so damn easily to her mind.

 _If I die, maybe I'll get to see Abby again._

Oh.

 _Ohhh_.

The thumping heart.

The joy she gets out of making Abby smile.

Those compelling eyes.

She finally gets it, that elusive feeling that's been drawing her energy and thoughts towards the other woman since the moment they met.

 _Holy. Shit._

A chill runs through her body despite the fire encasing the pod, and her heart's beating so fast it threatens to jump right out of her chest. Time seems to stop as she tunes out the raging pandemonium surrounding her, Raven's entire world shrinking down to the epiphany she's just made, and she forgets for a moment that she's on a crash-course towards Earth.

She has feelings – _romantic_ feelings – towards Abby.

All that time spent working on the escape pod with Abby pacing in the background, that wasn't just the beginnings of friendship or of amicable collaboration, at least not for Raven. That was the development of something _more_ , something Raven has never felt for anyone other than Finn.

Oh shit. _Finn_.

Raven gasps, the noise sounding deafening within the helmet. If she manages to survive this descent, she's got a boyfriend waiting for her on the ground. But the boy on the ground isn't the person she'd wished to be by her side while facing imminent death. He isn't the first person she'd dreamed of seeing if she makes it to any possible afterlife. And the thought of Abby's loss makes Raven's heart constrict and ache far more than it's ever done during her separation from Finn.

Raven's world just got a whole lot more complicated.

A particularly vicious tremor wrenches Raven from side to side in her seat, snapping her attention back to her more critical, immediate problem. As the blues and greens of the earth race closer and closer, as the heat encircling her becomes unbearable and the pod's shaking intensifies, it's not looking like this romantic complication is something she'll have to worry about for long.

Raven struggles to open her eyes as she starts to come to, blood dripping across her field of vision. The light filtering in through the pod's windows is painfully bright, far more intense and luminous than the artificial lighting on the Ark. Her head's pounding – _concussion_ , her mind hazily supplies, in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Abby's – and as she pulls her helmet off and probes at her aching, blood-soaked forehead, she understands why.

A blonde girl pokes her head inside the cockpit, and Raven wonders for a moment if her head injury is inducing hallucinations. When the girl's gaping expression transforms into an astonished smile, Raven grasps the fact that this is really happening.

"Hi," Raven says, voice gravelly and throat dry. The simple greeting seems ill-fitted to such a momentous occasion, but her skill with witty banter hasn't quite yet caught up with her frazzled state. Her eyes track from the girl to the vibrant landscape of trees and bushes she can see through the pod's windows. The acrid scent of burnt metal and the sulfuric after-effects of the thrusters wafts through the air, but there's also an unfamiliar, almost sweet dampness. "I made it?" she croaks out, voice rising incredulously.

If she has, the accomplishment is bittersweet. Making it to the ground means reuniting with a boyfriend that she was definitely _not_ thinking of in her potentially final moments. And it means having to live with the fact that the person who _was_ in her thoughts is now floating lifeless through space.

The girl's grin gets even wider, and she nods.

Raven's seen that face before, but it takes her trauma-addled brain a moment to put the pieces together. She flashes back to the monitors in medical, and Abby agonizing over one profile in particular.

"Clarke?"

The girl's brow furrows. "How did you know?"

Clarke's cheeks are fuller, rounder, and her eyes are a different color than Abby's, but even through her mental fog, even without the frame of reference from the Ark's prisoner files, Raven can see the resemblance there. Raven's concussed mind can't even recollect what color Finn's eyes are at the moment, but she vividly remembers the scared, pleading expression in Abby's big, brown eyes as the two of them parted on the Ark. She'll forever be haunted by Abby's look of resignation towards her fate, and the way her voice had broken on those final words – _"Tell Clarke I love her."_

"Your mom…sent me," is all she's able to get out, her throat closing up from emotion as much as exhaustion.

 _I found her, Abby._

 _I'm sorry._

Raven scrambles to unbuckle herself from her harness, and Clarke reaches towards her, ready to help her out of the pod.

Raven shakes her head, the movement making her dizzy as it stirs up the throbbing from the concussion. She jerks her chin towards the instrument panel. "The Ark. We have to call the Ark. _Now_."

She couldn't save Abby, but when the Council learns that the planet really is survivable, maybe Raven can save _everyone_ left on the Ark – not just those currently facing population reduction. The bizarre and convoluted chain of events that had led Raven to Earth could herald a new beginning for them all.

She only wishes Abby could be a part of it, too.

Who knows how Abby had felt about Raven, if they would ever have been anything more than a plucky mechanic and a fearless doctor to one another, or how this newly discovered attraction fit into Raven's relationship with Finn. But she's lost someone in almost the same breath as unearthing her true feelings towards them, and even as she faces the prospect of a new beginning here on the ground, she can't help but mourn the end of something that hadn't even had a chance to start.

" _Raven, honey, it's Abby."_

The voice seems impossibly distant, the figure crouching before her hazy and out of focus. But unlike Clarke's sudden appearance in the escape pod, this time Raven's immediately certain that what she's witnessing isn't a hallucination. Even through the dizzying pain and the way her consciousness seems like it's slowly slipping away, Raven can feel the warmth of Abby's hands on her cold, clammy skin. Though it had happened only fleetingly on the Ark, the sensation of Abby's hands on her body has already been seared into Raven's mind.

A wave of relief courses through her, not because she thinks she's about to be saved, but because Abby's _alive_.

One of Abby's hands roams over Raven's face and pulse points, while the other grabs ahold of Raven's hand and squeezes, hard.

"You're going to be ok, Raven, just hold on."

Raven can't move, can barely speak, the bullet from Murphy's goddamned gun sending lightning bolts of agony into her spine. And she doesn't have to be a doctor to know that she's lost a lot of blood. Despite Abby's reassurance, Raven is once again fairly certain that she's on death's doorstep, but she's so thankful to feel that touch, that presence again, that as Abby turns to her companions and barks out orders, Raven breathes out a shaky sigh and allows a slow, wide smile to blossom.

They didn't float her. Abby's _alive_.

Abby catches Raven's grin and she halts in her examinations. She quirks her head to the side and smiles warmly in return, her eyes softening.

"Hey, Doc," Raven utters quietly. Again, she wishes she had something more clever to contribute, something that would showcase her trademark quick wit to this woman whom Raven gets such a rush out of impressing. But it's all she can do to even get those two short words out, and they don't come close to conveying how elated she is to see Abby once more.

Abby cups Raven's upper arm and rubs her thumb over Raven's bicep affectionately, a smirk on her lips. "I can't leave you alone for two minutes, can I?"

Raven huffs out a weak laugh, barely more than a sigh. "Then I guess you better…" she pauses to catch her breath, already winded, "…stick around this time." Somehow she summons enough strength to lightly squeeze Abby's hand.

Swallowing hard, Abby nods, her smile turning watery. "You got it," she vows, her husky voice catching on the words. She steadily holds Raven's gaze for several charged seconds before batting her eyes and breaking away from the look, becoming all business again as she resumes ministering to Raven's care.

Raven wants to ask how Abby managed to escape her death sentence. She wants to know about everything that transpired between their heavyhearted departure on the Ark and this fateful reunion, but she suspects that it's a long and painfully complicated story. And there might not be much time left for her if she wants to tell Abby about any of the revelations she had while hurtling towards the earth. But in her current state even thinking is becoming increasingly impossible, and at the moment there are more pressing matters at hand than talking.

The pain is escalating, now spreading out from her back to zip along every nerve fiber, making her muscles twitch and spasm, and her blood seems like it's boiling inside her body. Even her bones hurt, and every time she takes a shallow, stilted breath it feels like the bullet worms its way deeper into her flesh.

Every minute she remains awake is sheer torture, but she fears that if she shuts her eyes she may never open them again. She forces her eyelids to remain open and focuses on Abby hovering above her. Dirt, grease, and dried blood streak Abby's cheeks and forehead, but if anything it just makes Abby look even more bold and tenacious than Raven already knows her to be. Sunlight radiates in through the door of the drop ship, forming a glow around Abby and glinting off of the lighter strands of hair that are scattered amongst her brunette locks. If this is truly the end, it's a gorgeous final sight, and Raven's heart swells as Abby's hands reverently and attentively dance over her. She'd certainly rather go like this than alone in an exploding escape pod.

Raven hones in on the concentration and determination shining from Abby's eyes, and a surge of hope rockets through her. Abby had needed a relic of a spaceship repaired, and in recruiting Raven's help, got it done. Abby had wanted to get someone to the ground, and she'd sacrificed herself to make it happen. She'd defied their trigger-happy government in spectacular fashion, and yet has somehow come out of it very much alive. Abby is a force to be reckoned with, and with Abby now by her side, Raven just might manage to cheat death once again. And if she does, then she can divulge how much Abby has been in her thoughts these past few weeks – and maybe she'll get a chance at a new beginning with Abby after all.


End file.
